Mark Henderson, Times (London), Sept. 24, 2009
Genetic profiling shows that the structure of Indian society today reflects early social groupings, not just colonialism India’s caste system is not a relic of colonialism but has existed in some form for thousands of years, the most comprehensive study yet of the genetic diversity of the sub-continent has suggested.
The genetic profiles typical of modern castes are indistinguishable from those of much older tribal groups, Indian and American scientists have found. This suggests that they emerged from populations of shared ancestry who have married among themselves for many generations.
The researchers wrote in the journal Nature: “Some historians have argued that caste in modern India is an ‘invention’ of colonialism, in the sense that it became more rigid under colonial rule. However, our results indicate that many current distinctions among groups are ancient and that strong endogamy [marriage within a group] must have shaped marriage patterns in India for thousands of years.”
Kumarasamy Thangaraj, of the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) in Hyderabad, and a leader of the study, said: “It is impossible to distinguish castes from tribes using the data. The genetics proves that they are not systematically different. This supports the view that castes grew directly out of tribal-like organisations during the formation of Indian society.”
Researchers analysed more than 500,000 genetic markers from 132 people from 25 different groups.
The research established that modern Indians of all castes are descended from two ancestral groups.
Indians can trace between 39 per cent and 71 per cent of their ancestry to a population known as the Ancestral Northern Indians (ANI), who are quite closely related to Europeans and Asians. Those with a higher ancestral contribution from the ANI group are more likely to belong to higher castes, and to speak Indo-European languages such as Hindi and Bengali.
The other ancient population are the Ancestral Southern Indians (ASI), who are not genetically close to any group outside the sub-continent. People with a higher ASI ancestry are more likely to belong to lower castes, and to speak non Indo-European languages such as Tamil.
The research, by scientists from CCMB in India and Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the United States, has also established that Indians are much more genetically diverse than Europeans.
This result indicates that many modern Indian groups are descended from a small number of “founding individuals”, whose descendants interbred among themselves to create genetically isolated populations.
Lalji Singh, director of CCMB, said: “India is genetically not a single large population, but instead is best described as many smaller isolated populations.”
This insight has important medical implications for people of Indian origin, because groups that are descended from small founding populations often have a high incidence of inherited diseases. Ashkenazi Jews, for example, have a high risk of Tay-Sachs disease.
This may explain why several genetic conditions are more common in India than elsewhere: a mutation in a gene called MYBPC3, which raises the risk of heart failure sevenfold, is found in 4 per cent of Indians but is exceptionally rare elsewhere.
The only ethnic group who do not have this shared ancestry is the indigenous population of the Andaman Islands in the Indian Ocean, who appear to be of exclusively ASI descent.
Nick Patterson, of the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, said: “The Andamanese are unique. Understanding their origins provides a window on to the history of the Ancestral South Indians, and the period tens of thousands of years ago when they diverged from other Eurasians.”
Mr Singh added: “Our project to sample the disappearing tribes of the Andaman Islands has been more successful than we could have hoped, as the Andamanese are the only surviving remnant of the ancient colonisers of South Asia.”
Aravinda Chakravarti, of Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland, wrote in a commentary for Nature: “Greater ANI ancestry is significantly associated with Indo-European speakers and with traditionally ‘higher’ caste membership. This provides a model of how diversity within India came about. As such, its details are imperfect and will surely be contested, revised and improved.
“Caste and custom may be strong barriers between groups, perhaps even today. But the common shared ancestry and rampant ANI/ASI mixture may be the strong, invisible thread that binds all Indians.”
Original article
(Posted on September 25, 2009)
Comments
I hope there aren’t too many comments on this story because the idea that white people invented the Indian caste system is too stupid to warrant a serious response.
Yes this article is correct. The introduction of eurocentrism is a big reason why India is as modern as it is today. They may not have liked colonialism but in India the British practiced a benign colonialism that benefitted the Indians far more than it harmed them.
Historically, the greatest harm to India came directly from the Muslim invaders. The Muslim conquests were for the Hindus a pure struggle between life and death. Entire cities were burnt down and their populations massacred. Each successive campaign brought hundreds of thousands of victims and similar numbers were deported as slaves.
In Afghanistan, Muslim invaders murdered the entire Hindu population there. The Islamic Bahmani sultans in central India, made it a rule to kill 100,000 Hindus a year. In 1399, Teimur killed 100,000 Hindus IN A SINGLE DAY, and many more on other occasions. Koenraad Elst quotes Professor K.S. Lal’s “Growth of Muslim population in India”, who writes that according to his calculations, the Hindu population decreased by 8O MILLION between the year 1000 and 1525 (Negat.34).
The Indians owe the British a debt of thanks for helping them become a modern country and weeding out the Muslims from their ranks (e.g. they left India and formed Pakistan).
The real problem for the public’s misunderstandings on issues like this imo derive from the modern liberal Marxist revisionist cultural anthropologists influence.
This is fascinating stuff and wholly supports the long held idea that India was invaded and conquered by a group of northern Aryans that implemented the caste system. Opposition to this idea has been incredibly strong by many Indians recently and I’m glad that a widely published genetic study has finally laid this debate to rest. What I’m surprised to read is that the southern Indians are related to the Andamese; I had always read that southern Indians were more similar to Aborigines.
For some good pictures and details about the Andamese negritos, here is a good site:
http://www.andaman.org/
Amazing that these folks once made up the original population of India.
This article kind of pulls its punches.
In an article in Archeology magazine, September/October of 2001, page 13 they were a bit more blatant saying the upper caste Brahmins after DNA testing “are more genetically similar to Europeans” from a “Vedic invasion” (too afraid to say “Aryan” invasion, I guess).
The magazine includes a picture of Brahmin priest, who in a pinch could probably pass for White.
The caste system in India is a byproduct of Hindu religion and philosophy. Nothing else.
“The caste system in India is a byproduct of Hindu religion and philosophy. Nothing else.”
No, the caste system and Hindu religion are the byproduct of the ruling Aryan elite. As the article states, the southern Dravidian black Indians make up the lower castes while the upper castes are made up of the Indo-European Aryans. The divide is both ethnic, genetic and linguistic. This isn’t an accident. The Dravidians didn’t choose to be in the lower castes; they were forced there by their leaders, the Aryans. The caste system was a system of subjugation. The Hindu religion was also a cleverly designed mythology that portrayed the Aryans as noble gods and the blacks and demonic villains. By forcing all to follow this religion, the Aryans were able to subdue the discontent of the Dravidians through religious indoctrination.
The notion that the caste system was somehow introduced or encouraged by British colonialists is laughable - only the deceitful would entertain such a notion and the credulous believe it.
I have actually seen far more Black Americans, than Indians, insist that the caste system was the result White Colonialism. Most of them also insist that the darker South Indians, or what they term Dravidian’s, are the ancestors of black Africans, which I always found ridiculous, given the fact that their features, and hair texture are extremely different, regardless of how dark most South Indians tend to be. In any case, most blacks look to blame everything on Whites, and the caste system is no exception.
“Product of colonialism” is laughable indeed. The British left many of the local rulers in place; they were there only to make money, and not to radically change Indian society. There was a great deal of distrust of the British by both Hindus and Muslims, who feared the Christian British would attempt proslytizing, but very little of that was attempted. The Indian Army Mutiny has been described in some quarters as a “rebellion”, but the main cause was the paper cartridges issued for the muzzle-loading Enfield rifle of the day. To use a cartridge, the soldier bit the end off, poured the gunpowder down his muzzle, rammed that home, and then added the bullet, also contained in the cartridge. Afterward, he cocked the hammer, primed the breech with a primer cap, and fired. These paper cartridges had to survive long-term travel and storage in all sorts of climate conditions, so to keep the gunpowder from going bad, they were waterproofed. The main component of the waterproofing was beeswax, but the Hindu and Muslim Sepoys accused the British of using beef tallow and pork lard as well. These of course would be quite offensive to the two groups. There probably even was beef tallow and pork lard in the mixture, as well as mutton fat, but the Sepoys’ British officers simply didn’t know what the mixture was, and couldn’t give straight answers. The mixture probably even varied from one lot of cartridges to another.
Colonialism got an undeserved bad reputaion. The British organized the construction of the first major railroad network in Asia in India, a railroad network that in expanded form still forms the core of India’s transportation network.
India and Latin America are quite similar in this regard, except that India is far older than Latin America. Yet, the Indo-European invaders of Latin America are considered brutal colonizers, while those of India are not. A double standard still exists, folks.
Almost shocked they aren’t trying to pin Suttee (ritual widow burning) or thugee on White Colonialism. The Empire lifted those people out of the dark ages; just as European colonialism did elsewhere. Now that “evil-whitey” is gone, these places are more often than not sinking back into their natural state denigration. Just imagine how much faster they would revert if they weren’t funded through international organizations and World Bank, or kept afloat by American companies offshoring to compete in a tariff-less “World Economy”
Michael C. Scott:
For all the good things the British did in India, I tend to think that adding the Indian Subcontinent to the British Empire was one of the worst mistakes in history. The reason is that there are now hundreds of millions of Indians that (1) Know enough English, and (2) Are willing to work cheap either in India, so American and British jobs can be outsourced to Bangalore, or in English-speaking white countries, H-1B visas and the like.
Many scientists believe that the “Aryans” who became the upper class of India are actually the people of ancient Persia. In other words, ancient Europeans (Whites) did not create the elitist caste system of India; ancient Persians (Middle Easterners) did.
So if it’s true that the caste system had nothing to do with colonialism, then how come Indians with darker skin are usually at the bottom end of the caste system? In India, light skin usually leads to greater economic opportunities and the ability to move up. This is a clear consequence of colonialism.
Present indian population is made up from two distinct group (ANI -ancestral northen indians, and ASI- ancestral southern indian).
Now people tend to think that ANI originated from Middle East or Europe, and that is a highly debated issue. Recent research has shown that ANI people originated from northern india itself. As such, migration is from india towards other part of the world.
http://www.nature.com/jhg/journal/v54/n1/full/jhg20082a.html
what we can conclude is that there were 2 distict tribes in india (both indian originated) who mixed up looooong back, tenth of thousand of years back to give the present indian we know.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/news/india/Aryan-Dravidian-divide-a-myth-Study/articleshow/5053274.cms
That the suggestion would even be made that the caste system is alone a legacy of colonialism is ludicrous. The caste system is part and parcel of the Hindu relitgion, and has been for many thousands of years! To suggest anything but that is absurd.
Sri Lanka too, the conflict between Tamil and Sinhalese is said to be a result of the colonialist whitey English favoring the Tamil. NO! The Tamil and Sinahalese were at war in the 1400’s when the Chinese treasure fleet arrived, and then way before that around the year 1000 the Tamil king Rajaraja conquered most if not all of Sri Lanka. Folks fighting for a long time way before whitey came on the scene.
Always whitey. Whitey is always to blame.
Veronica, your ignorance is abysmal. Long before colonialism was even thought of, people with darker skin were at the bottom of the caste system not only in India, in China, even in Spain and England. 100 Years ago a lady in England always wore protection against the sun when going out of the house. There is very simple reason for it and the Chinese today are practicing it to the limit.
Reply to Michael C. Scott:
Good point. It is a lot harder to outsource a call-center in Germany then in England or America.
Reply to Veronica (and others); The caste system in India is centuries, perhaps milleniums old. It is the core basis of Hinduism. It predates the British by an enormous time period.
Veronica said “So if it’s true that the caste system had nothing to do with colonialism, then how come Indians with darker skin are usually at the bottom end of the caste system? In India, light skin usually leads to greater economic opportunities and the ability to move up. This is a clear consequence of colonialism.”
If it is a consequence of colonialism, it was certainly not a consequence of EUROPEAN colonialism. The reason being that the caste system long predated the arrival of the Portugese or English.
It is my understanding that the Hindi Caste System comes from the Vedas, which were written in 1500 BCE.
14 Veronica: The caste system is the result of colonialism, all right, just not of British colonialism. The Dravidians were colonized by Vedics or ANIs or whomever thousands of years ago. If there is any blame, put where it belongs, with the Brahmins, the descendants of the conquerors.
The belief is that Aryan speaking peoples who actually migrated to Persia originated to the north and the west of the Russian steppe and Ukraine.The ancient authors held that the Perians who were famed for their ‘magic’ learned it from the Finns - who of course dwelled in north Eurasia.
So if it’s true that the caste system had nothing to do with colonialism, then how come Indians with darker skin are usually at the bottom end of the caste system? In India, light skin usually leads to greater economic opportunities and the ability to move up. This is a clear consequence of colonialism.
What Sandy S is saying is nonsense that is being promoted by Hindu nationalists. Sandy S is probably an Indian. India has lot’s of DNA form outside of India.
“The other ancient population are the Ancestral Southern Indians (ASI), who are not genetically close to any group outside the sub-continent. People with a higher ASI ancestry are more likely to belong to lower castes, and to speak non Indo-European languages such as Tamil.”
I’ve always thought of India as a multi-racial society. The findings of the Nature study certainly indicates this. Light skin can be a real advantage in Indian society—don’t let a few Indian nationalists kid you otherwise.
— Veronica wrote at 8:11 PM on September 26:
So if it’s true that the caste system had nothing to do with colonialism, then how come Indians with darker skin are usually at the bottom end of the caste system? In India, light skin usually leads to greater economic opportunities and the ability to move up. This is a clear consequence of colonialism.
If North Indians are indeed the descendants of Eurasians, who somehow created a society which held down other Indians, then surely colonialism can’t be blamed on it, since Hindu culture, stretches back far, far, longer.
LOL!
The Indian caste system was because of colialism, eh? HA!
Preposterous.
I don’t care how ludicrous the myth, as long as it’s one that has to do with denigrating whites it will gain wings and fly to the four corners of the earth, and there will be thousands of Veronicas who will believe it with all their hearts and souls.
The multi-culturalists are onto something: white’s can’t be credited with everything.
We didn’t create AIDS, we didn’t invent the caste system…
No, the caste system and Hindu religion are the byproduct of the ruling Aryan elite. …By forcing all to follow this religion, the Aryans were able to subdue the discontent of the Dravidians through religious indoctrination.
Interesting and very Machiavellian. History is about power, domnation and subjugation, using ideology (or religion, in this case) for justification. We are seeing an inversion of this today in the West with non-White populaces using the ideologies of multiculturalism and liberal guilt to to subjugate the indigenous populaces of Europe, and the European-descended populace of North America. One wonders if in the future we will see a new caste system emerge, with Whites on the bottom (as is the case on many liberal universities).
“There was a great deal of distrust of the British by both Hindus and Muslims, who feared the Christian British would attempt proslytizing, but very little of that was attempted.”
In fact the British colonial government really discouraged missionary activity because it would upset the Indians and cause endless problems. British officials considered the activities of missionaries an ongoing problem.
Veronica, when the Portoguese arrived in Bombay harbor around 1520??? the first thing they wrote about was the fact that the low castes who were treated very badly, (killed if they used the wrong well among other things) were dark brown skinned and the highest castes, Brahmins and warrior Kings were light tan.
“Many scientists believe that the “Aryans” who became the upper class of India are actually the people of ancient Persia. In other words, ancient Europeans (Whites) did not create the elitist caste system of India; ancient Persians (Middle Easterners) did.”
But Persians themselves were Indo-European and came from somewhere north of the Black Sea.
“when the Portoguese arrived in Bombay harbor around 1520 the first thing they wrote about was the fact that the low castes who were treated very badly … they were dark brown skinned ..”
But no, to put it bluntly, they were black, they were very black.
The present day Persians of Iran are not the original
Linguistic Persians are those natives of Iran who were
I have to agree with Sandy S. Most of you people here
The Caste Indians and Tribal Indians differ only on the
